Affordable housing is built and maintained to a high standard, ensuring safety and accessibility for all residents.

Policy

Support and incentivize development, preservation, and maintenance of affordable units of all types that provide residents a safe, dignified, and healthy place to live.

Actions are grouped under the categories of Partner, Plan, and Provide to better tell the story of how policy produces results.

• Increase prioritization for affordable housing preservation and improvement in Livable Communities Act funding criteria.
• Offer technical assistance to local governments and counties on housing preservation and maintenance programs, policies, and practices.
• Develop opportunities to remove disincentives for voucher holders to report life, health, and safety issues to Metro HRA
• Provide a clear preference in scoring Livable Communities Act housing development projects that exceed the Minnesota Housing state-required minimums that units be designed and constructed to meet accessibility requirements.
• Prioritize the development of accessible units incorporating universal design in Met Council grant programs.
• Support the development of affordable age-restricted housing options at various care and service levels, with priority for households that have historically had less access to wealth-building opportunities.
• Inform state building code updates to encourage construction of more affordable, maintainable, high-quality, safe, and climate-resilient homes.
• Promote the use of housing code enforcement or rental licensing as tools to maintain unsubsidized affordable housing.
• Partner with Met Council Environmental Services to develop a process to prioritize low-income and historically overburdened households in the allocation of the Private Inflow and Infiltration (I/I) Grant Program.
• Track unsubsidized affordable housing in the region and share data with local staff to monitor changes over time and identify areas and/or properties for preservation.
• Research and provide local governments with technical assistance to identify local policy barriers to accessible development
• Seek opportunities to find new sources of funding to be used to prevent buildings from going into disrepair or becoming unsafe

• Consider applying the affordable preservation and substantial rehab of affordable housing units either set to expire or in a state of disrepair towards a local government’s allocation of Future Affordable Housing Need.
• Require the local need for accessible housing units to be considered in local level plans.
• Require the local need for affordable age-restricted housing options at all service levels be considered in local level plans.
• Require that local governments identify local-level preservation tools be they will seek to use or continue to use in local comprehensive plans.
• Require local comprehensive plans to identify the use of tax abatement, fee waivers, or other locally available financing tools they will seek to use or continue to use to encourage the maintenance and preservation of unsubsidized affordable housing.

• Participate in local, regional, and state conversations and initiatives implementing and/or supporting tenant protections prioritizing accessible, safe, and healthy housing.
• Partner with organizations around the region to provide best practices on program design or partnerships for local preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing to ensure incentives are well-designed for improving or maintaining housing quality and affordability.
• Partner with community organizations to develop resources, and access to legal support when needed, to ensure people have continued access to quality living environments.
• Work with partners in advocacy and public funding, such as HousingLink and Minnesota Housing, to monitor potential properties nearing their federal subsidy expiration, and explore providing assistance for preservation strategies.
• Partner with nonprofit providers to promote tenant and landlord rights and responsibilities and support renter initiatives.
• Cultivate relationships with landlords participating in housing choice voucher programs to support positive tenant-landlord relationships.

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